Wednesday 18 January 2017

More Musical Genres


I love 80s songs that give a brief glimpse of a tawdry, pseudo-sophisticated world. "Love is a stranger in an open car." Like nostalgia for something you’ve never experienced. And in the 80s you could dress up as a character in your fantasy. In smart clothes, pearls and a hat. Or a girl on the cover of a 40s pulp novel. Or...
There are endless genres that are very slight variations of dub/house/hiphop. I think.

Is there a name for singer-songwriter indy sobbing, huffing and kvetching, with lots of words and emoting and not a trace of a tune? Or a structure?

Seem to be a lot of fey young women crooning softly over wispy synths on astronomical themes at the mo. (Rupert Goodwins ‏@rupertg)

LOL just remembered that my old flatmate used to refer to a genre known as dripping-tap minimal. (Douglas Murphy ‏@entschwindet on Autechre)

lofi chamber pop (“A bit like Gregorian thrash” says exponent on Pointless)

The end-of-Empire music-hall pastiche which was to so occupy The Kinks and to a lesser extent, also The Beatles. (rockabilly.nl Add one-man bands, brass bands, circus bands and camp vocals.)

Hauntology: An electronic music from the UK, made largely by musicians who were children in the 1970s or 80s, influenced by library music, analogue electronics, children's television (particularly stories revolving around the supernatural), some folk-rock, public service information films, modernist architecture, hip-hop, rave and electronica and occasionally older steam-punk tropes. Check out Belbury Poly, Moon Wiring Club, Advisory Circle. (Wired July 2011)

In some ways analogous to US musics such as witch house and vapourwave with similar themes of nostalgia and missed/misunderstood futures but with a distinctly different sound. (Phil Jones)

jazz swagger (Yuk.)
mellow Celtic mysticism (Andrew Male)
sophisti-pop (Yup.)
witch house
More here.

1 comment:

  1. Marc Almond's Say Hello Wave Goodbye always seems to be the consummate 80s song, as in your first quote.
    You in a cocktail skirt - you're used to wearing less, and now your life's a mess.
    Take off that unbecoming frown.
    -- the lyrics are like a poem.

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